Women in Canadian politics

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Gender representation has been a significant issue in Canadian politics.

The first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons was Agnes Macphail, in the 1921 election. Although female representation in politics has increased since then, and several political parties have identified increasing the number of female candidates as an organizational and political goal, no major Canadian political party to date has achieved perfect gender parity in the number of candidates nominated for election.

Political parties have occasionally achieved balanced representation in their elected caucuses, but only as a byproduct of a party collapse — for example, in the 1993 election, the Progressive Conservatives achieved gender parity in their elected caucus, but only by virtue of electing just two Members of Parliament nationwide and losing official party status. At various times, parties have also had 100 per cent female representation in their caucuses, but again only by virtue of having a caucus that consisted of just one or two members.

[edit] Women as federal representatives

See also: Women in the 39th Canadian Parliament

As noted, in the 1921 election Agnes Macphail became the first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons. Four other women — Harriet Dick, Rose Mary Henderson, Elizabeth Bethune Kiely and Harriet Dunlop Prenter — also stood as candidates in the same election, although they were not successful.

Macphail was reelected in every subsequent election until 1940. She was the only woman in the House of Commons until 1935, when she was joined by Martha Black. In the 1940 election, Macphail was defeated and Black did not stand as a candidate, but Dorise Nielsen was elected. Cora Taylor Casselman was elected in a 1941 byelection to succeed her late husband. Nielsen and Casselman were both defeated in 1945, but Gladys Strum was elected that year. Strum, in turn, was defeated in 1949, the only election after 1921 in which no female candidates were elected to Parliament at all. However, Ellen Fairclough was elected to the House in a by-election the following year.

In the subsequent 1953 election, four women — Fairclough, Margaret Aitken, Sybil Bennett and Ann Shipley — were elected to Parliament. Every subsequent election has had at least two women elected to Parliament, except 1968 when Grace MacInnis was the only woman elected.

Shipley became, in 1955, the first woman in Canadian history to introduce the formal motion to accept the Speech from the Throne. Fairclough became, in 1957, the first woman appointed to the Cabinet of Canada.

The number of women elected to the House reached double digits for the first time in the 1979 election, when 10 women were elected.

In 1980, Jeanne Sauvé was appointed the first female Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons.

Federally, the 1993 election holds the record for the most female candidates in a single election, with 476 women running for office that year. In terms of women elected to the House of Commons, the 2004 election holds the record, with 65 successful female candidates. In the 2006 election, one fewer woman was elected for a total of 64, but this remains the second highest total in Canadian history. ^[1] As well, because 11 fewer women stood as candidates in 2006 than 2004, the percentage of female candidates who were successfully elected to office was higher in 2006. As of September 17, 2007, the victory of Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac in the Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot by-election brought the number of women in the House of Commons back to 65, but the number was again reduced to 64 in January of 2008 with the retirement of Lucienne Robillard. With the subsequent by-election wins of Joyce Murray and Martha Hall Findlay, and the concurrent resignation of Brenda Chamberlain, the number of women in the House is currently back at 65. See also Women in the 39th Canadian Parliament.

Of the major federal political parties, the New Democratic Party has nominated the most female candidates in every election since its creation, except in the 1962 election when it tied with the Progressive Conservatives. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada nominated more women than the New Democrats in 1979 and 1980, although they are a minor party who have never won a seat in the House of Commons. Between the 1935 and 1958 elections, the top ranking was consistently held by either the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation or the Labour Progressives.

In the current parliament, the 12 women and 18 men sitting as New Democrats constitute the most gender-balanced caucus ever elected to a Canadian parliament by a party with official party status.

[edit] Leadership

Kathryn Cholette of the Green Party was the first woman ever to win the leadership of a federal political party, and Audrey McLaughlin of the New Democratic Party was the first woman to win the leadership of a party with seats in the House of Commons.

Canada has had one woman Prime Minister, Kim Campbell. She became Prime Minister before the 1993 federal election by winning the leadership of the governing Progressive Conservatives, but lost the subsequent general election. No woman has ever been elected Prime Minister of Canada in a general election.

Two women, Sheila Copps and Anne McLellan, have served as Deputy Prime Minister, although this is largely a ceremonial post with very little actual power.

Several women, including Mary Walker-Sawka, Rosemary Brown and Flora MacDonald, had previously run for the leadership of federal political parties. MacDonald unwittingly lent her name to a political phenomenon known as "Flora Syndrome" when even some of her own committed delegates at the Progressive Conservative leadership convention, 1976 failed to vote for her, a loss of support which many commentators attributed to sexism.

One woman, Deborah Grey, has served as interim Leader of the Opposition. However, no woman has, to date, held this position in an official, non-interim capacity. Grey also served simultaneously as interim leader of the Canadian Alliance.

Two other women have served as leaders of political parties in the House of Commons: Alexa McDonough, who succeeded McLaughlin as leader of the New Democratic Party in 1995, and Elsie Wayne, who served as interim leader of the Progressive Conservatives in 1998.

None of the parties represented in the 39th Canadian parliament currently has a female leader. Six smaller political parties are, however, currently led by women:

Green Party of Canada - Elizabeth May
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) - Sandra L. Smith
Canadian Action Party - Connie Fogal
First Peoples National Party of Canada - Barbara Wardlaw
Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada - Liz White
Neorhino.ca - Richelle Cloutier

The Green Party has attracted up to 14 per cent voter support in public opinion polls in recent years, and is now the largest and most widely supported political party in Canada that does not currently hold a seat in the House of Commons.

[edit] Senate

The first woman appointed to serve in the Senate of Canada was Cairine Wilson, in 1930.

Three women — Joyce Fairbairn, Sharon Carstairs and Marjory LeBreton — have served as Leader of the Government in the Senate. LeBreton is the current incumbent. One woman, Céline Hervieux-Payette, has held the position of Leader of the Opposition in the Senate. She is also the current incumbent.

One woman, Muriel McQueen Fergusson, has served as Speaker of the Senate, a position she occupied from 1972 to 1974.

[edit] Women as provincial and territorial representatives

Main article: Women in Canadian provincial and territorial legislatures

At the provincial level, the first woman elected to a provincial legislature was Louise McKinney in Alberta. The first woman to serve as a provincial cabinet minister was Mary Ellen Smith in British Columbia. Both were also the first women in the entire British Empire to hold those distinctions, and Smith also became the first woman in both Canada and the British Empire to serve as Speaker of a legislature.

Hilda Watson, who became leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in the Yukon, led her party to victory in the 1978 territorial election, the territory's first partisan legislative election — however, she failed to win her own seat, and therefore did not become government leader.

Canada's first woman premier, Rita Johnston, took office under similar circumstances to Kim Campbell. Johnston won the leadership of the governing Social Credit Party in 1991, becoming Premier of British Columbia, but the party was defeated in the subsequent general election.

To date, only two woman, Liberal Catherine Callbeck in Prince Edward Island and Liberal Pat Duncan in the Yukon, have been elected premier of a province or territory in a general election. Callbeck's Liberals were elected in 1993 and Duncan's won in 2000. Nellie Cournoyea has served as territorial premier through a consensus government system in which she was selected by her colleagues in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories rather than by the general electorate. No other women have, to date, ever served as leaders of a Canadian provincial or territorial government.

Three women are currently serving as leaders of major political parties at the provincial level: Carole James (New Democratic Party of British Columbia), Pauline Marois (Parti Québécois) and Lorraine Michael (New Democratic Party of Newfoundland and Labrador). James is currently Leader of the Opposition, while Marois and Michael are both leading third parties. Olive Crane is the current interim leader of the Prince Edward Island Progressive Conservative Party, and Yvonne Jones is the current interim leader of the Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Party. Both are currently the Leader of the Official Opposition in their province.

Five women are currently serving as Deputy Premier of their province or territory: Shirley Bond in British Columbia, Rosann Wowchuk in Manitoba, Nathalie Normandeau in Quebec, Elaine Taylor in the Yukon and Levinia Brown in Nunavut.

[edit] Personal aspects

In 1985, Pauline Marois became the first woman in Canadian history to give birth to a child while serving as a cabinet minister. She was followed in 2001 by British Columbia Member of the Legislative Assembly Christy Clark.

In 1987, Sheila Copps became the first woman in Canadian history to give birth to a child while sitting as a federal Member of Parliament. In 1999, Michelle Dockrill became the first Member of Parliament to bring her newborn baby into the House of Commons.

Women in politics still sometimes face a double standard, with their personal lives subject to greater scrutiny than those of men in equivalent positions. In what some commentators have characterized as an example of sexism, Clark was asked by several journalists to explain how she could properly do her job as provincial Minister of Education while simultaneously raising a newborn child.

Both Copps and Campbell wrote in their autobiographies that their romantic and family lives were excessively scrutinized by colleagues and journalists. In the 2006 book The Secret Mulroney Tapes, Brian Mulroney — Campbell's immediate predecessor as Prime Minister — asserted that Campbell's romantic relationship with Gregory Lekhtman distracted her from conducting a proper campaign in the 1993 election. He did not, however, elaborate on how Campbell's personal life constituted a greater distraction to her political career than his own family life with his wife Mila and their four children did to his.

Similarly, when Belinda Stronach crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 2005, political reaction to her announcement took on a very different tone than similar moves by male politicians — while David Emerson, for instance, was criticized in a relatively civil manner for the ethics of his floor-crossing, Stronach was variously labelled a "dog", a "dipstick" and a "whore" by her former colleagues. She subsequently attracted more press for dyeing her hair brown and dating Tie Domi than for her political or business accomplishments.

[edit] Political aspects

Unlike the offices of state governor or President in the United States, Prime Ministers and provincial premiers in Canada are not independently elected by the general electorate. Instead, the position goes automatically to the leader of the largest party caucus in the legislature. This creates a significantly different campaign dynamic, which may unintentionally complicate the efforts of women to achieve higher office. For instance, while it is possible in the United States for voters to choose one party's candidate for the state governorship and a different party's candidate for their local representative in the state legislature, Canadians vote only for their local representative, and not directly for their premier or prime minister.

In fact, Canadian political parties led by women have often fared particularly poorly in election campaigns. Most notably, Lyn McLeod's Ontario Liberal Party lost the 1995 provincial election despite having more than a 10 per cent lead in the polls when the election was called. McLeod was criticized for a perceived tendency toward weak leadership and flip-flopping on the issues; PC election ads depicted McLeod as a weathervane shifting in the wind.

Campbell's Progressive Conservatives and McLaughlin's New Democratic Party were decimated in 1993, both failing to reach official party status. Alexa McDonough led the New Democrats to a modest resurgence in the 1997 election, but lost seats again in the 2000 vote. Several women leaders of provincial parties, including Sharon Carstairs, Lynda Haverstock and Nancy MacBeth, proved unable to capitalize on early signs of popularity, all ultimately losing significant ground for their parties. Carole James led the British Columbia New Democratic Party to a resurgence in the 2005 election, recovering from just three seats in the legislature to 33, but has also recently faced criticism from some voters who have asserted that she isn't a strong enough leader to take the party any further.

Political commentators have also noted that Catherine Callbeck was the only woman in Canada ever to lead her party into an election where her main opponent was also a woman (Patricia Mella), and some have raised the possibility that even Callbeck might well have lost the election if she had faced a male opponent. Some have attributed this to the belief that the voting public still consciously or unconsciously ascribes greater leadership qualities to men than to women. Sheila Copps, for example, once noted in a newspaper interview that ""if you're a woman and you're aggressive, you're a ball-buster." ^[2]

Conversely, however, MP Martha Hall Findlay has asserted that one of the biggest barriers to women's greater participation in politics is their own fear of stepping into the public spotlight: "I can't tell you the number of women who say, I don't know if I have a thick-enough skin, or I don't know if I have what it takes. And I look at them and think: Okay, you told me you have three children. You started your own business. You now employ 73 people. And you tell me you don't have a thick-enough skin and you don't think you have what it takes? Look in a mirror. Why is it that some people who are so capable and so accomplished somehow still don't think they have what it takes?"^[3]

Commentators have also claimed that political parties in Canada have tended to turn to female leaders as an almost cynical ploy in times of crisis — in some cases, parties have been accused of relying on the "novelty" of a female leader as almost a substitute for creating a substantive policy platform. In this interpretation, female leaders are frequently rejected by the electorate not because of their gender itself, but because their gender alone isn't enough to compensate for the weakness of the party's overall campaign. In her autobiography Time and Chance, Kim Campbell claimed that her own campaign staff sometimes treated her more as a figurehead than as the actual leader of the party, even going so far as to keep campaign offices at Brian Mulroney's preferred room temperature even if Campbell ordered them to adjust the thermostat. ^[4]

The non-partisan organization Equal Voice, whose board consists of several prominent female politicians, works to assist women in running for public office through education, advocacy and professional networking.

[edit] Municipal politics

Women, conversely, have had much greater success in politics at the municipal level.

Hannah Gale was the first woman elected to a Canadian municipal government, as well as the first woman elected to any political office in Canada. In 1936, Barbara Hanley in Webbwood, Ontario became the first woman ever elected as a mayor in Canada; in 1951, Charlotte Whitton in Ottawa, Ontario became the first woman elected mayor of a major Canadian city.

Other notable women mayors in Canada have included June Rowlands and Barbara Hall in Toronto, True Davidson in the former Toronto suburb of East York, Frances Nunziata in York, Dianne Haskett and Anne Marie DeCicco-Best in London, Hazel McCallion in Mississauga, Marion Dewar and Jacquelin Holzman in Ottawa, Jan Reimer in Edmonton, Gretchen Brewin in Victoria, Susan Fennell in Brampton, Jamie Lim in Timmins, Elsie Wayne in Saint John, Helen Cooper in Kingston, Janice Laking in Barrie, Lorna Jackson in Vaughan, Andrée Boucher in Quebec City, Dorothy Corrigan in Charlottetown, Moira Leiper Ducharme in Halifax, Susan Thompson in Winnipeg, Grace Hartman in Sudbury, Lynn Peterson in Thunder Bay, Kathy Watson and Bev Buckway in Whitehorse and Elizabeth Kishkon in Windsor.

In 1984, Daurene Lewis was elected mayor of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, becoming the first black woman to be elected as a mayor in North America.

[edit] Viceroyalty

Canada is a constitutional monarchy whose head of state, currently Queen Elizabeth II, is represented in Canada by the Governor General and in the provinces by the Lieutenant Governors, who perform the ceremonial functions of the head of state in the Westminster system. The heads of state of the territories are Commissioners representing the federal government, not the Queen. All are ceremonial roles with negligible real political power.

The Governor General and Lieutenant Governors are appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister.

Canada has had two female monarchs since Confederation: Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II.

Jeanne Sauvé was the first female Governor General of Canada, appointed in 1984. Two other women have since served as Governor General: Adrienne Clarkson and incumbent Michaëlle Jean.

The first female Lieutenant Governor was Pauline McGibbon, appointed Lieutenant Governor of Ontario in 1974. Since then, all of the provinces except Newfoundland and Labrador have had female Lieutenant Governors.

The first female territorial commissioner was Ione Christensen, who became Commissioner of Yukon in 1979. Helen Maksagak was both the first female Commissioner of the Northwest Territories (in 1995) and of Nunavut (in 1999).